Marriott Corp. on Monday unveiled plans to split in two next year, separating its prosperous hotel management and franchise business from its wholly owned hotel and retirement properties. The two companies, known as Marriott International Inc. and Host Marriott Corp., will be listed separately on the New York Stock Exchange and have their own management teams. The move will shift nearly $3 billion in debt to Host Marriott.

The protracted labor dispute at the New Otani Hotel & Garden in Los Angeles eluded resolution Monday, as the hotel's Tokyo management--in a long-awaited meeting with two of its L.A.-based employees--rejected requests to rehire three fired workers and meet directly with union officials.

A poster that union organizers say depicts them as Nazis is adding extra emotion to a labor fight at Santa Monica's only unionized hotel. Jewish community leaders and Miramar Sheraton Hotel workers gathered Thursday to decry what they said were offensive anti-union tactics by hotel management as members of Local 814 of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union prepare for a decertification vote Wednesday.

Luis Fournier has picked tomatoes in Florida, plucked chickens in Mississippi and cut tobacco in North Carolina. But the former literature teacher from Cuba, now unemployed, has found that landing a job in his chosen profession is an impossible American dream. Alipio Hurtado was the general manager of a Cuban resort hotel before fleeing by boat two years ago. After a frustrating year of looking for work, he took a job installing metal railings at construction sites.

The evenings can get lonely in the lobby of downtown Los Angeles' Wilshire Grand Hotel & Centre nowadays. Gone are many of the Asian tourists, conventioneers and U.S. business travelers who ordinarily fill the hotel's guest rooms. The ranks of employees, including front desk clerks, bellmen and concierges, have thinned too. The Wilshire Grand, like so many big-city hotels across the country, is suffering through a crisis in the U.S. travel business. On the slowest nights since Sept.

Question: I recently found a notice on TripAdvisor about the hotel I manage that said TripAdvisor thinks "individuals or entities associated with or having an interest in this property may have interfered with traveler reviews and/or the popularity index for this property." Now I've received an e-mail that says this is a violation of TripAdvisor policy and in some places a violation of federal law. Neither my staff nor I did anything wrong. Now what? S. Benham San Diego Answer: This is such a tangled issue that it's best to start not at the beginning but at Step 2. Go to http://www.

From a luxury resort hotel perched high in the arid mountains that rise up from the Red Sea, the government of Kuwait goes about the business of running a country in exile. By day, the desert wind whines eerily through the vaulted lobby, while white-robed security guards with machine guns in shoulder holsters roam past the reception desk. Government aides carry reports from the Defense Ministry, on the mezzanine level, to the prime minister's reception room, on the fifth floor.

He was raised in Sherman Oaks, played baseball and football at Van Nuys High, and graduated from Cal State Northridge with a degree in political science. Peter Broudy has roots there, but that's not why he has brought his business to the San Fernando Valley. As president of Celebrity Boxing, Broudy set up the sweet science in the upscale environs of the Warner Center Marriott Grand Ballroom last year for a better reason: He knew the venture would succeed. First and foremost, beyond any nostalgic calling, Broudy made his decision based on his business instincts.

The gig : Efrem Harkham, 55, is the founder and chairman of Luxe Hotels, a Los Angeles company that owns two local hotels and Luxe Worldwide Hotels, a management firm that oversees the operation of 200 independently owned hotels. Worldwide: The company employs 315 workers and provides marketing, sales, reservations and other services for hotels in Europe, South America and the Middle East, as well as North America. Locally, it owns the Luxe Sunset Boulevard Hotel in West Los Angeles and the Luxe Rodeo Drive Hotel in Beverly Hills.

While the downtown area of Palm Springs remained active with vacationing students milling around parks and streets, the revelry of recent days appeared to have quieted down, officials reported. Arrests for the Easter weekend totaled 528, Palm Springs police said, compared to 347 a year ago. In the wake of the well-publicized student rampage, "It seems everyone is recuperating or laying around," Sgt. Dave Goodwin said, "getting sun and taking a whole lot of aspirin."